Geostationary Satellites

ADVANTAGES OF GEOSTATIONARY ORBITS

• Make repeated observations over a given area (constant view area)

• Get high temporal resolution data.  GOES E and W can give you a temporal resolution of 1 minute!!  Hence, GOES E and W can effectively monitor the severe weather environment and track severe storms and hurricanes in real time.

DISADVANTAGES OF GEOSTATIONARY ORBITS

• Due to the high orbit, the spatial resolution of the data is not as great as for the polar orbiting satellites

• Poor spatial resolution in the polar regions (parallax).  We will talk more about this later.